Education Commons^™

The Science Of Reading For English Learners, Allison Hanson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In recent years, a movement of researchers, educators, and parents promoting the science of reading has been reigniting the so-called “reading wars.” This movement has pointed out the ways in which typical balanced literacy practices do not reflect research on how students learn to read, especially in the acquisition of word recognition skills. However, the current debate is sometimes ignoring the unique needs of a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. student population: English Learners (ELs) and other multilingual students. This capstone project addresses the question: How does the science of reading inform reading instruction for ELs within a balanced …

Strengthening Early Literacy Skills Through Data-Driven Decision Making, Kaari Bly

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

As part of this research, nine professional development sessions and a data workbook were designed to address the research question: how can a school establish a sustainable system for making data-based decisions to strengthen the literacy skills of kindergarten and first-grade students necessary for further educational success? Data-driven decision-making is an essential component of an MTSS framework and is based on the steps of a problem-solving model. Key tenets of a data-driven school include strong leadership, a comprehensive assessment system, easy access to data, time and resources to examine data, and clear connections between data and potential interventions. Often schools …

Parents’ Perceptions Of Their Children’S Achievement In The Reading Class Using A Flipped Classroom Model: A Case Study Of Tenth Grade Female Students In Zarqa Directorate Of Education تصورات أولياء الأمور لإنجازات أطفالهم في دروس القراءة باستخدام أنموذج التعليم المقلوب: دراسة حالة لطالبات الصف العاشر الاساسي في مديرية تربية الزرقاء, Tasneem Shraideh, Prof. Abdallah Ahmad Bani Abdelrahman

Jordanian Educational Journal

Abstract: The flipped classroom is considered as an academic trend worldwide. Despite its growing popularity, this area of research remains unsettled in Jordan as very few studies were devoted to this model. Hence, the study at hand sets out to investigate the perceptions of parents following the implementation of a flipped classroom model in the EFL reading classroom (Grade 10) in Zarqa Directorate of Education, Jordan. A questionnaires was developed and distributed to (51) parents by the end of the second academic semester of the year 2018/2019. Results showed that parents were positively influenced by their children’s feedback after experiencing …

A Comparison Of Guided Reading And Systematic Phonics Approaches To Supplementary Reading Instruction, Madeline R. Berkowitz

Doctoral Dissertations

Early mastery of reading fundamentals is essential. However currently there is a debate on the best way to teach reading. Across the US schools are choosing to use varying forms or reading curricula aligned with different pedagogies. However, not all curricula are based in empiral science. This study compares two approaches to supplementary reading instruction: guided reading and explicit phonics. A randomized controlled design was used, and first grade students were assigned to receive either explicit phonics or guided reading intervention three days per week for approximately thirty minutes each lesson. Reading fluency and a broad reading measure served as …

Teaching With The Genius In Mind: Enacting Literacy As A Civil Right, Katie Glupker, Pam Gower, Angela Knight

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Because literacy is a civil right, educators are responsible for designing and implementing literacy education that is designed with the excellence of all students in mind. In order to learn about ways to ensure that literary practices are equitable for all students, the authors joined an educators’ book club to read Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad. Muhammad describes the Black literary societies of the past and challenges educators of today to enhance classrooms by upholding equity and excellence through a five-layered framework: Identity, Skills, Intellect, Criticality, and Joy.

We studied Muhammad’s …

Book Review Letting Go Of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction For White Students, Jeremy Hyler

Michigan Reading Journal

Race, racism, and literary whiteness are at the forefront of many conversations in education today. In Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students, authors Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides highlight what should be addressed in our classroom today to address race and racism.

The Association Of Afterschool Programs' Organizational Characteristics, Program Instructional Quality, And Developmental Outcomes., Jason B. Pittman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After-school programs (ASPs) are institutions that impact the development of millions of children in the United States. Although the ASP literature is extensive, research related to organizational characteristics, quality, and developmental outcomes is limited. The purpose of this research is to understand the association between organizational characteristics of ASPs, instructional quality within ASPs, and developmental outcomes (i.e., reading, fitness, and social emotion learning [SEL]) for children attending ASPs.

The study utilized a quasi-experimental longitudinal design with secondary data analysis. This study used 2018-2019 school year data from The Children’s Trust, a government organization of Miami-Dade County that funds programs for …

A Qualitative Study Of Parental Needs In Supporting Home Literacy Environments And Child Literacy Interest, Leah Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Literacy education begins long before students step foot in their first classroom. Much research has been done that highlights the importance of the home literacy environment and the development of literacy interest in children (Jeynes, 2018). Home literacy environment (HLE) refers to the variety of literacy materials and activities found within the home. Literacy interest, broadly put, is a child's desire to engage in literacy activities. The development and practice of these has shown to be correlated with students' later reading success in school. Considering this, the role of a parent in their child’s success is influential. However, it seems …

Examining The Experiences That Motivate High School Students To Read For Leisure, Umair Farooq

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

In my role as a high school principal, I feel that reading is an essential tool for gaining a better grasp of the world around us and enhancing one's academic skills. As is the case with many others in my area, and before starting this research, I was worried about the decline in motivation to read for leisure that generally begins in the high school years (Brozo et al., 2014). Students' enjoyment of reading can be stifled by schools' use of forced reading practices, the selection of texts that do not match their identity, and a lack of knowledge of …

"I Can't Say That I Hate It": Reading And Ela Teachers' Experiences With A Scripted Curriculum, Amanda Rigell

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how teachers implemented, modified, or resisted the implementation of a scripted English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum. This critical case study used qualitative interviews to investigate reading and ELA teachers’ experiences with implementing a scripted ELA curriculum in a single school district. Findings include teachers’ observations about the role of the curriculum in their teaching, the role of their self-efficacy as teachers, the role of reciprocal trust between administrators and teachers, and the role of power in the adoption and implementation of the curriculum. These findings may be of interest to school and …

The Effects Of Guided Reading In A Primary Montessori Classroom, Taylor Bates, Mary Brocklesby, Katie Mcgarrigle

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

The purpose of this action research was to decide if conducting guided reading instruction three times a week in a primary Montessori classroom would make an impact on reading levels among kindergarten students. The research took place over six weeks in a public Montessori school. The school is a Title One school located in a rural area of South Carolina. The population who participated in the study were 26 kindergarten students aged five to six from three different classrooms. Our intervention included using a variety of reading strategies such as pointing to each word, using picture clues, sounding out words, …

Reading With Social, Digital Annotation: Encouraging Engaged Critical Reading In A Challenging Age, Miranda L. Egger

English Theses & Dissertations

This design-based research study examines the pedagogical role of social, digital annotation in teaching reading as rhetorical invention, particularly the kind of invention necessary for thoughtful democratic participation in the contemporary discursive era, often described as troubled. In this dissertation study, I deployed a classroom-based intervention meant to challenge how educators in rhetoric and composition/writing studies might directly address the acute and exigent discursive struggle in the first-year composition classroom. This study ultimately finds that social, digital annotation invites significant shifts in students’ reading habits, in that Hypothes.is-based annotations yielded a far more complex, multifaceted set of reading skills, behaviors, …

How Rhythm Affects Prosody, Mckenzie Ward

Student Research Submissions

Music interventions and how they benefit reading fluency have been researched, but there is more to be done in discovering the benefits of rhythm and prosody. This quantitative research study looked at how rhythm-based interventions affect student prosody in a second-grade classroom. Data were gathered from a music experience survey, a prosody pre-assessment, and a prosody post-assessment. The music intervention in this study involved three rhythm-based interventions called “DeeDee games.” This research analyzed and compared the growth between the prosody pre-and post-assessments and the results between students with musical backgrounds and students without musical backgrounds. This study found insufficient evidence …

Engaging Disinterested Adolescent Readers In The Middle School Classroom, Elizabeth M. Lezman

Culminating Experience Projects

Reading is a necessary skill and habit that adolescents need to carry into adulthood to set them on a more advantageous life trajectory. As students reach adolescence and their interest and engagement in reading tends to decrease, it is vital for educators to implement strategies and structures to promote engagement, passion and interesting in reading. Three key factors of increasing engagement are to build a community of readers, implement choice reading, and provide texts representing a variety of identities, cultures, traditions and voices. Research has proven that students are more engaged in reading when they feel part of a community, …

Better For Gifted Students? Comparing The Sem-R Program For Gifted And Typically Gifted Students, Catie Snowden

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading will raise comprehension and retelling in typically developing and gifted and talented students. The research questions ask whether the program will increase comprehension (question 1) and if the program was more effective for the gifted students versus the general classroom population (question 2). The Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading was implemented through a 4-week study with pre- and post- assessments to measure the changes in comprehension and retelling. The results showed that the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading was effective in raising comprehension and retelling …

Developing Critical Consciousness In The English Language Arts Classroom, Benjamin Moberg

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Critical consciousness, first conceived by Freire (2014), and later adopted into Ladson-Billings’ (1995) culturally relevant pedagogy, supports students in understanding systemic injustice and their capacity to create change. With a specific focus on the English Language Arts discipline, the curriculum designed for this capstone incorporates a number of reading, writing, and discussion strategies to answer the research question: What are the most effective strategies for developing critical consciousness in students in the English Language Arts classroom? In this eight week curriculum, students learn to read with and against a classical text, discuss and debate the ideologies underpinning the text, and …

Effective Reading Strategies For Multilingual Learners In The Mainstream Classroom, Megan Hebert

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project was designed to provide educational support for the literacy development of multilingual learners in the mainstream classroom. The guiding questions this project seeks to answer are: How can multilingual learners develop strong literacy skills within their mainstream classrooms? What strategies, resources, and instructional models best support them in this learning? These questions led to relevant literature that provided research in the areas of instructional model design, engagement strategies, home language scaffolds, and cultural considerations. Through these four key areas, educators will be able to grow in their ability to meet the needs of their multilingual learners and …

Utilizing Bipoc Class Novels In The Middle School Classroom To Promote Empathy, Bailey Fowler

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research focus for my capstone is: Utilizing BIPOC Class Novels in the Middle School Classroom to Promote Empathy. I have designed a website titled “Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Literature” to be accessed and utilized by parents and teachers of middle school students. For adults who seek high quality literature by / about People of Color that also incorporate empathy-building Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills, this website is an excellent resource. As the adolescent brain develops, so does the capability for empathy. Perspective-taking occurs after learned experiences. The perspective-taking element of empathy can be explicitly taught to adolescents in …

Amplifying Rural Voices: Defining, Reading, And Writing Rural Stories, Chea L. Parton

The Montana English Journal

This pedagogical piece introduces teachers to Literacy In Place - a resource that supports the readingand teaching of rural young adult literature. It also outlines an example unit to highlight how secondary ELA teachers could use Literacy in Place to support students' reading of Nora Shalaway Carpenter's (2020) Rural Voices anthology.

Teachers Describe Their Confidence In Teaching Secondary Students With Low Literacy Skills, Tamara Polzin

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

For some students, grasping the concept of literacy is completed with ease. For others, the challenges of developing literacy skills to aid in their ability to move from learning to read to reading to learn proves challenging. These challenges cause a gap in literacy growth and have shown to increase as students get older preventing them from fully accessing the concepts found in the secondary setting. As such, secondary educators are being called upon with the assumption that all teachers are teachers of reading. With this in mind, this qualitative research study aimed to uncover secondary social studies teachers’ understanding …

Parental Involvement And The Academic Achievement Of Third And Fourth Grade Students During The 2014-2015 And 2015-2016 School Years, Rise’ D. Black

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to find out if parental involvement in the study school helped to increase student academic achievement. Previous studies have shown that when parents are involved in the educational process of children, parents can expect a gain in academic achievement. This mixed method study examined the relationship between parental involvement and academic gains in reading at one suburban public school. The researcher examined how often parents met with teachers at their child’s school, conversations parents had with teachers about what they were learning in school, how often parents were involved with a parent group, how …

Exemplary Practices Which Support Achievement Gaps In Reading And Writing For Hispanic Ell Learners In Title I Twenty-First Century Elementary Schools, Melinda Gonzalez

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and describe strategies used by public school 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade teachers to support English language learners in Title I public schools.

Methodology: This phenomenological study identified and described 14 teachers' 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade perceptions on effective strategies to support English language learners in reading and writing. Respondents were purposively chosen based on specific criteria and recommendations of an expert panel of experts and data was coded using NVIVO.

Findings: The expert panel members identified multiple strategies to support English language learners. Strategies include (a) Question higher level of …

Community Mapping 2.0: Using Technology To Raise Community Awareness, Chris Sclafani

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Community mapping can be an important tool for educators who aim to freely allow students to share their own connections and experiences. During community mapping, students identify areas within their own localities that matter to them, and engage in various literacy events centered on those places. Often, classes will study foreign lands and cultures during the course of a school year. While this is a wonderful learning opportunity, do they take the time to look deeper into their own personal neighborhoods and surroundings? This study uncovers the nuances of community mapping, as a group of third grade students work through …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Teaming Practices In Multi-Tiered Systems Of Support And Overall Implementation Fidelity Of Elementary School-Wide Reading Models, Stephney Anderson Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) have been increasingly implemented in schools since the re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. Despite researchers’ efforts to identify elements of MTSS— including evidence-based practices, leadership and communication systems and structures to address learning needs— it has been challenging to identify what makes MTSS work in schools. In fact, researchers have found that schools who implement MTSS on their own tend to stray from the intended practices when the external support of coaches or research teams fades from the school (Balu, Zhu, Doolittle, …

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Teaching Literacy To English Language Learners (Ells) Who Struggle With Reading And Who Are In A Suburban District In New York State, Kara A. Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020) have shown that despite efforts to raise the literacy skill levels of students in elementary school, the average reading scores for fourth-grade students in 2019 were still cause for concern. The NAEP data showed the reading scores in four percentiles (i.e., 10th, 25th, 50th, and 75th) from 2019 dropped in comparison with the corresponding data garnered in 2017 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). In addition, the number of students whose first language is not English has soared by 105% in the last decade (i.e., …

Designing A Literacy Program For A Better Chance, Better Community (Abc2), James E. Pittman

Education Projects

ABC2 is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that connects rural communities with resources in order to trigger youth power and advocate for practical solutions and healthier lifestyles. This project concentrated on the planning stage of developing a literacy program for students in rural Halifax County. The proposal was written to take use of both sides' current strengths while also looking for ways for the organization, community, and me to expand. Its assessment entailed three steps, including evaluation of whether the project met base criteria, assessment of the project’s impact, and evaluation of the project’s complexity. The primary focus of this project …

Literacy Score Gains In Grades K-2 In A Response To Intervention Program, Diana Dawn Thill

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Fewer than half of students demonstrated proficiency on Michigan state-administered summative assessments at the end of third grade at a rural, Title I school in Michigan. The purpose of this quantitative study was to compare reading fluency gains between grade levels (i.e., kindergarten, first, and second grades) in an effort to better understand which grade level demonstrates the most growth. The framework for this research study was the constructs of the variability of learning disabilities. Using a sample of 260 cases, this ex post facto pre-post quantitative study investigated the measurable fluency gains between grade levels in the Dynamic Indicators …

Using Song To Teach Sight Words, Taylor Hagood Guin

Graduate Research Showcase

This research is about how a group of seven kindergarten classes used a short and straightforward song to recognize the following six common kindergarten sight words: on, off, up, us, no, & go. As a current music educator and former middle grades English teacher, I wanted to create an opportunity to establish cross-curricular connections in my music classroom. For this specific experiment, seven different classes, including General Education, Self-Contained Special Education, and English Language Learning classes, were selected. They were taught these six sight word songs through the “Sight Word Song.” I selected the sight words specifically because the students …

Influence Of An Afterschool Reading Program On Elementary Student Reading Achievement, Chapple Osborne-Arnold

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractMany elementary school students require and may benefit from supplemental reading support and interventions that can be provided by afterschool programs. The problem addressed in this study was that it was not known if third grade students benefited from an afterschool reading program in one East Tennessee District. The purpose of this quantitative study was to compare end of year scale scores on the Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR) of third grade students who attended the afterschool reading program for 30 or more days and those who did not attend the afterschool reading program while controlling for …

Fidelity Of Implementation Of A Balanced Literacy Program In The Elementary Classroom, Shalonda Young

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe local problem is that literacy in the target school district continues to rank below the state average and the fidelity of implementation (FOI) of balanced literacy (BL) has not been addressed since BL was initiated in 2014 to address student literacy achievement. Teachers reported limited professional development (PD) and lack of motivation to implement BL as designed. The purpose of this basic qualitative research study was to explore elementary English language arts (ELA) teachers’ and support staff personnel’s perceptions of the FOI of a BL program in the target school district ELA classrooms to determine in what ways the …